As optical discs have increased in recording density and capacity, assuring optical disc reliability has become increasingly important. To assure this reliability, optical disc drives use a learning process to determine the recording and playback conditions of the disc. This learning process is taught, for example, in Japanese Unexamined Patent Appl. Pub. 2001-338422.
These recording and playback conditions depend greatly upon the characteristics of the optical disc and the characteristics of the optical disc drive. As a result, the learning process used to determine the recording/playback conditions must be executed every time the optical disc drive is started after an optical disc is loaded, and whenever there is a change in either optical disc or optical disc drive characteristics due to such factors as a change in temperature.
Even more recently, further advances in optical disc recording density and storage capacity have made it necessary to determine the recording/playback conditions even more precisely. However, determining the recording/playback conditions more precisely by means of this learning process means that the learning process takes more time. As a result, the optical disc drive spends more time waiting for recording or playback to start.